Potholes

Before the city has to cough up those 125 million bucks due to the rampage at Rampart, let's hope someone at City Hall can finally send out one last road crew to fill in those gawd-awful potholes on Sunset by UCLA. One of these days we're going to lose an entire "pillow barge" limousine and then the city will really be in for it! JOHN CRANDELL Westwood Village

Any L.A. cyclist can go on about the dangers of riding on the far right of the road closest to the curb. In short, hazards tend to lurk there, out of sight and mind for motorists but perilously unavoidable for those on bikes. In one of The Times' videos on sharing the road in L.A., Highland Park resident Melanie Freeland cogently summed up the dilemma for cyclists who want to steer clear of the unsafe, unreliable pavement by riding more in the center of a traffic lane: "I think that the majority of L.A. traffic thinks that bicycles should be riding the curb.

South Los Angeles is playing a leading role in the city's movement toward healthier living and complete streets. That's something that Tafarai Bayne of TRUST South L.A. wanted to make clear Sunday as cyclists were about to begin a ride from Watts to the north end of Central Avenue in Little Tokyo. “My mom raised me as a vegetarian in South L.A.,” he said, “growing food in our backyard. The healthy lifestyle has existed in South L.A. for quite some time. But we haven't always had the support we need in terms of infrastructure.” The purpose of the ride was twofold: to highlight the portions of the avenue that are pocked with potholes or where cyclists could benefit from bike lanes, and to spotlight the storied avenue's cultural landmarks.

Re "Potholes Popping Up," Feb. 25: The photograph tells all about potholes. The first large truck that ran over that asphalt probably cracked it. Isn't it time to come up with another product that can withstand today's heavy trucks? California used to have the best roads in the world. Now we may have the worst. Sweden, for example, has beautiful roads that withstand heavy snows and more rain then we have ever seen. Perhaps someone could write to the Swedish civil engineers and find out what they use for road material.

The repair crew spotted its target on Alameda Street downtown a little after 9 a.m. Sunday — two potholes about 3 inches deep. They cleaned a roughly 9-foot-by-3-foot rectangle around the offending divots, applied a special glue, dropped asphalt from the back of their truck, raked it over and used a vibrating plate to pack it down. Another layer of glue, and they were done. Two down, and a seemingly endless number to go in the war against asphalt atrophy. City officials launched Operation Pothole over the weekend in hopes of repairing 20,000 of the potholes that can blow out a tire or spill your coffee.

South Los Angeles is playing a leading role in the city's movement toward healthier living and complete streets. That's something that Tafarai Bayne of TRUST South L.A. wanted to make clear Sunday as cyclists were about to begin a ride from Watts to the north end of Central Avenue in Little Tokyo. “My mom raised me as a vegetarian in South L.A.,” he said, “growing food in our backyard. The healthy lifestyle has existed in South L.A. for quite some time. But we haven't always had the support we need in terms of infrastructure.” The purpose of the ride was twofold: to highlight the portions of the avenue that are pocked with potholes or where cyclists could benefit from bike lanes, and to spotlight the storied avenue's cultural landmarks.

The Times is to be commended for publishing Philip Stephens' enlightening article (Editorial Pages, Aug. 7), "Potholes in Our Tax Philosophy." Stephens touched on an issue that has been vexing me for a long period of time. We're constantly being told these days we should get government off our backs. This is a favorite cry of the current Administration. What President Reagan and his advisers fail to acknowledge is that our government is a democratic government. As Stephens pointed out, there's a contrast between the government of King George III, Ferdinand Marcos and our form of government.

Alec Baldwin misses the point in drawing his analogy to defense contractors giving some portion of their profits to the Defense Department to explain why the entertainment industry should not be expected to supplant federal arts funding ("Baldwin Responds to Gingrich," April 12). The fact is that there is something approaching a national consensus for the necessity of a defense budget. There is something far less than a consensus as to the merits of giving $100 million or so to the arts.

When he drives his 2006 Toyota Land Cruiser to work, William Fleischman can tell if the streets he's navigating are in Los Angeles (bumpety-bumpety) or Beverly Hills (smooth). Among the worst, he says, are the roads just beyond his gated driveway in Holmby Hills, a posh L.A. enclave north of Sunset Boulevard. Along Carolwood Drive, Faring Road and Brooklawn Drive, tree roots have buckled the concrete pavement. Cracks are visible. An orange cone alerts motorists to an 18-inch-square hole filled four inches deep with water.

One of the top complaints of Angelenos in recent years has been the, shall we say, sub-optimal condition of the city's roads. If city officials can persuade more residents to get out of their cars and onto their bicycles, the wear and tear on the roads will diminish. But there's a flip side: The city may face more lawsuits from cyclists who are toppled by potholes, pavement cracks and other hazards of the city's worn streets. And that raises an interesting question: Will Los Angeles have to maintain its roads at an even higher standard than the one it's not meeting today?

Daniel Knorr's L.A. solo debut at Kayne Griffin Corcoran features an array of brightly colored wall pieces that resemble polished quartz, shards of hard candy, or perhaps the crystallized remains of a spilled Slurpee. Mostly ovoid in shape, with delicately irregular edges, they are mirror-smooth on the surface but semi-transparent, revealing craggy fissures and cracks in their depths. They feel both natural and artificial, which makes sense since they are cast from L.A.'s potholes, organic blemishes in a synthetic landscape.

To be fair, crumbling infrastructure isn't entirely a negative story, and I was reminded of this while driving through my neighborhood last week. There are sections of Silver Lake Boulevard, near the Hollywood Freeway, where driving is like slalom skiing. You've got to bank left, then pull hard to the right, to avoid obstacles that include gullies, potholes and elevated manhole covers. Heading west, the street turns into Beverly Boulevard, and you're still clunking along on what feels like a pile of rocks.

Re "L.A. full of roads to ruin for cars," May 5 As The Times reports, public funds dedicated to Los Angeles' road maintenance this year total an all-time high of $105 million - about $42 per registered vehicle in the city. But that's a small fraction of what each driver must pay because roads aren't maintained in good condition. According to a recent report in The Times, each California driver pays $586, on average, for damages his or her car sustains from roads not being maintained in good condition.

Third in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls. In the early 1980s, Wendy Greuel was at a crossroads. In one direction was the family building supply company housed in a dusty North Hollywood warehouse. The other way, a career at Los Angeles City Hall in Mayor Tom Bradley's administration beckoned. Bright, young and ambitious, Greuel had balanced duties on the high school cheerleading squad and as student body president with part-time work at Frontier Building Supply - where she kept the books, drove a forklift and answered the phone that sometimes rang for her mother's side business, the White Lace Inn. The 17-year-old Greuel, raised a Republican, was star-struck when she first met the Democratic mayor during a youth leadership ceremony atop City Hall.

With the Los Angeles mayoral primary just over two weeks away, candidates are fine-tuning their appeals to diverse groups across the city's vast expanse of neighborhoods. On the Westside, longtime city officials Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel and Jan Perry are vying for dominance among affluent liberals and moderates. Along the northern and western rims of the San Fernando Valley, moderates and conservatives are key targets for Greuel, the city controller who represented parts of the area when she was on the City Council; Republican Kevin James, a former radio talk-show host; and Perry, a downtown councilwoman presenting herself as a business-friendly budget hawk.

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn is trying to buy enough Pothole Killers, asphalt-toting trucks that fill street crevices twice as quickly as a two-person crew, to patch every city pothole within hours of a complaint.

What has started out as a very wet winter in Los Angeles could shape up to be one of the worst pothole seasons too. Dozens of repair crews took to the streets Saturday to patch up hundreds of potholes and other road damage caused by recent storms. "We hope to make between 10,000 to 15,000 small asphalt repairs, including potholes, pop-outs and skin patching," said William Robertson, director of the city Bureau of Street Services. The agency has received about 3,000 calls from residents in the last week about potholes and other road damage, he said.

August 31, 2012 | David Zahniser and Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is storming the national stage like never before, rebutting GOP talking points in Tampa, Fla., during the Republican convention, becoming a fixture on Sunday morning talk shows and preparing to open next week's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., where he will play a key leadership role. Written off by some after a much-publicized extramarital affair and a scandal over free sports and concert tickets, Villaraigosa has emerged as a major figure in the Democrats' efforts to get out the crucial Latino vote and is again being talked about as a future governor or senator.

In the pantheon of life's annoyances, there's nothing quite as expletive-inducing as hitting a pothole. Potholes jar the psyche as well as the car, the bicycle and, occasionally, the feet, leaving behind a trail of broken axles, flat tires and sprained ankles. No wonder some residents of Holmby Hills were so frustrated by the craters on their streets that they threatened to secede from Los Angeles and annex themselves to Beverly Hills. A blight as well as a safety hazard, a pothole seems so simple to fix. It's not like carving into the Sepulveda Pass to widen the 405 Freeway.